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Will Mars Lose Its Moon?
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Transcript of Will Mars Lose Its Moon?
Will Mars Lose One of its Moons?
Two young earth scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, USA,
made a discovery that could fundamentally change our view on Mars.
Image by Tushar Mittal using Celestia 2001-2010, Celestia Development Team
Mars' largest moon, Phobos, is slowly falling toward the planet. But, it is not
the way you might think. According to UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow
Benjamin Black and graduate student Tushar Mittal, the moon will rather
burst into millions of pieces and form a ring around the planet, like Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus or Neptune has. Both researchers believe this phenomenon
might occur in about 20-40 million years. In a paper that appeared in
Nature Geoscience, both scientists conclude that the cohesiveness of
Phobos is not sufficient enough to resist the tidal force and that’s why lets
the moon come closer and closer to Mars. As Phobos comes closer to the
surface of Mars, its tidal force pulls even stronger on it, so that at some
point it will just shatter into millions of pieces and form a ring around the
planet made of debris. The image above shows how Mars could possibly
look like. It is still not clear whether we from earth could see the rings or
not. Most likely, Mars will only appear a little brighter than normal at the
evening sky.